Kopeck - Pyotr I

Peter I's copper-to-silver kopeck swap in the early 1700s was part of a broader monetary overhaul tied directly to the cost of the Great Northern War against Sweden. These wire-cut "fish scale" coins — struck by hammering a small slug of metal between dies — were already an archaic technology by the time this piece was made, a holdover from 15th-century Muscovite practice that Peter himself despised and moved quickly to abolish in favor of machine-struck round coinage.

By 1718, the wire kopeck was gone entirely. The 1702 issues fall within the transitional window when the old system was already dying but not yet dead.